Finding Home: The Magic of Feeling Seen and Heard

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“The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place to go where we can go as we are and not be questioned.” ~Maya Angelou

In 2019, I found myself in a psychiatric institution sitting across from a psychologist who was grilling me about why I was there. She seemed angry.

I told her how heartbroken I was that no one “believed” the physical symptoms I was dealing with, caused by chronic illness and benzodiazepine withdrawal. I told her how my nervous system had been hijacked, and I could not control the terror I felt daily. I told …

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“The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place to go where we can go as we are and not be questioned.” ~Maya Angelou

In 2019, I found myself in a psychiatric institution sitting across from a psychologist who was grilling me about why I was there. She seemed angry.

I told her how heartbroken I was that no one “believed” the physical symptoms I was dealing with, caused by chronic illness and benzodiazepine withdrawal. I told her how my nervous system had been hijacked, and I could not control the terror I felt daily. I told her how everyone just assumed I was crazy and making it all up, and that even with a doctor’s diagnosis, I found myself in this terror alone each day.

She wore glasses and a blue suit, and I rambled, overexplaining to her the debilitating effects of withdrawal, derealization, extreme sensitivities, and depersonalization.

I talked about the emotional issues I had from trauma, and how I knew that what had occurred in the last ten years was more than that. I was getting sicker and sicker, and doctors could not explain it until very recently when they found that I had chronic inflammatory reactions from an overreactive immune system and was also in withdrawal from benzodiazepines.

I only took one pill a day and began having symptoms each day at around the same time. I told her how completely invalidated I felt and alone in my search for what was hurting my brain and body. She looked down and said, “That is really hard to believe.”

Clearly, the “danger” that brought me there did not cease while sitting across from her; it intensified. I knew gaslighting well, and the shame that went with it.

“I want to call my doctor, and I want you to speak with him,” I said, and then decided to stop talking. It became clear that this was not a place to be helped or heard, just a place to try to tolerate for a bit.

That night I lay in my bed, envisioning somewhere warm, where people sat by the beach strumming guitars, drinking fruit juices, talking, listening, and connecting with each other. The sun shone, the blue ocean waves crashed on the shore, and the birds sang. I wore a beach dress and flowers in my hair, and everyone around me in this community loved me.

The emotions I felt with this visualization were love, joy, and a feeling of being home with people who acknowledged me, wanted me around, and believed me. It helped to calm my highly activated body.  The home found in these visuals was what I sobbed for each day and used to soothe my nervous system.

I remember sobbing on my mother’s floor, begging her to take me “to the beach” when in a wave of withdrawal. Helpless, she grabbed me, helping me up, and said she didn’t understand nor know how to help.

It was true that I was already dysregulated before withdrawal. Disconnected since childhood from a stable home inside, I searched on the outside for this anchor. I suffered anxiety and bouts of depression along with other trauma-related dysregulation.

The ache for home began long before taking my first benzodiazepine, and safety was a feeling I could not always access alone.

It is also true that benzodiazepines exacerbated this tenfold and, together with the dysregulation, caused a whole host of chronic issues as well as perpetuated them. Unfortunately, my new doctor wearing blue did not believe me, nor did she believe the doctor I was working with on the outside who had called her.

The next morning in my cold, sterile, blue and white room, I woke up to find a girl sleeping in the bed next to me. There was a guard sitting in our room. I showered and went to breakfast.

There was a table of “regulars” who had been there for some time. They joked and talked loudly. I knew I was not welcome at this table. So I found a spot at a table where heads were down, and the energy was